History In Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners, David Olusoga describes the legacy of cruelty which underpins our wealth. In one sequence during the first episode whilst visiting Jamaica he's confronted with the instruments of torture utilised to subjugate slaves. There's a clip of this sequence here and amongst the objects is this tongue restraint utilised to subjugate slaves who challenged authority.

The apparatus looked familiar and for the rest of the sequence I asked myself where I'd seen it before. Then I remembered.

In Suffragettes Forever! The Story of Women and Power, Amanda Vickery describes the history of the women's suffrage movement. In one sequence during the first episode whilst visiting the Lancaster Castle Museum she's confronted by this tongue restraint utilised to subjugate women who challenged authority.

"Shot on 35mm film, this global archive contains many of the world’s enduring images and is rich in coverage of news events, celebrities, sports, music, social history, science, lifestyle and quirky happenings. It was the first newsreel to include sound, the first to use colour film, the first to break many exclusive stories, and is your first and last stop for newsreel footage.

"We hope you will enjoy exploring the British Movietone collection. Please feel free to share our content with friends and embed onto your own websites and social media forums."

Working through the names of the Doctors, all I found was the charming footage of Jon's wedding day from August 1960:

The Boys and Girls Exhibition at Olympia in 1964 which was also in the Pathe cache but worth it here for the announcer attempting to immitate the voice:

The Jersey Battle of Flowers from 1965. Soundless clip which has a Hammer Dalek on a float in the middle:

Another soundless clip, this time of the British Toy Fair in February 1965 which features the Dalek costumes pictured above:

Which is about as far as I've got. The metadata on the clips isn't as extensive as Pathe - you have to click through to the AP website for the dates of the clips - so if there is anything else, it's obscured by a lack of search terms. Vwrop. Vworp.

Film Politicians are often asked, "What you're favourite [insert album/television programme/film]?" and I'm usually pretty sympathetic when on hearing their answer it clearly sounds like something which has been chosen by their advisors or even through a focus group to best position their candidate or incumbent in relation to the portion of the electorate who aren't cynical about these things. There is in fact no worse question because even your answer, as Nick Hornby writes about in High Fidelity, will have a profound effect on how other people view you for better or worse. Hornby suggests that in the end it's not about what you like but who you're like. But as I think most of us know that's wrong in almost every respect.

For years when I professed to be a film fan knowing full well that the next question would indeed be "What's your favourite film?" I never did have an answer for just this reason. It's horrible. For one thing if you're a film fan there is no single answer because there are films we admire, films we love, films with memories connected to them, films which are technically brilliant and the last great film we've seen which is still marinating in our consciousness before we decided the way in which we love it. And it is also that we know that if we say the wrong film to the wrong person it can change a friendship or relationship going forward. I know, because this has happened to me. In both directions.

One of the harshest examples of this was in the first meeting between students and lecturers during my MA film studies course, just before lectures began when we were to introduce one another. In other words, you're sat in room with peers and lecturers, all of whom are going to judge you in one way or other and whatever you say will be used against you later in some way or other. Having just spent the past few years catching up, I could say without hesitation I rather liked French New Wave but something in me couldn't say I liked sci-fi. I couldn't. So I think I said something like "But I still admire films which are visually interesting even if the storylines aren't that great or some such." On that occasion, I could have said sci-fi since one of the modules was just about that. Yet, I fretted.

It's because of all of this, the pressure, that in the end I decided that I needed to choose a favourite film. By then I'd narrowed it down to the most necessary five, When Harry Met Sally, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Seventh Seal, In The Bleak Midwinter and Star Wars. But keeping those rattling around in my head and knowing that sometimes they have a habit of swapping in and out (In The Bleak Midwinter was Citizen Kane for a while and Ferris Bueller is in for Adventures in Babysitting) and there's also the rather sticky conversational moment when you end up saying, I can't give you one but I have five, which shows you've really thought about this. Oddly, if you can just real off one film people tend to think you haven't thought about it much at all.

Here's how I made the decision. For official reasons related to important things (I know!) I was asked to name my favourite film and rather like the random letters out of the Scrabble bag at the end of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy it allowed me to give the answer without thinking about it and my ultimate answer was When Harry Met Sally. Partly I wonder if it's because it was the first film on that list and with a previous shuffle it could just as easily be Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which was there for a while too and would have been on this list too if it hadn't been for Before Sunset). Then a bit later I was asked the question again in the predicted social setting, gave When Harry Met Sally again and it stuck. When Harry Met Sally is my favourite film ever.

Why? That's always the next question. I think because people are surprised. It's a film which is admired I think but it's from a genre which generally isn't thanks to it being thoroughly devalued by one too many Katherine Heigl or Jennifer Lopez vehicles and a general sense of making them all in the "chick flick" subgenre when for decades they were actually perceived to be enjoyed by men and women thanks to a more balanced approach to the gender portrayal within. Perhaps if they already know me a little bit, on that basis they might expect me to say either something falling out of the art house or science fiction. But I love them both equally so what would be the point. Which isn't to say I didn't spend about six months saying Inception. That was hilarious.

When Harry Met Sally is very funny. Which it is. As Hadley Freeman notices in her book about 80s films, pretty much every line is quotable and I do still at length. "You made a woman meow?" "Baby Fish Mouth." "Fur zee vest ov zee dey vee jall tuk lyke ziss." "On the side." "Married..." "There are two kinds of women: high maintenance and low maintenance." "Sheldon?" But some lines are simply philosophical. "You're right, you're right, I know you're right," are words to live by not least because it reminds you that sometimes you might be wrong and you need someone to remind you. "Everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor but they couldn't possibly all have good taste." "No one has ever quoted me back to me before."

Arguably it's Nora Ephron's greatest script, though she collaborated somewhat with all the main participants, director Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. Its key feature is that it doesn't have some high concept thing like even her later scripts and pretty much every romantic comedy since, other than that they meet each other over a number of years. The "impediment" which stops them from entering the relationship isn't time-travel, or being geographically separated or a number of dresses, it's that they're afraid that falling in love will ruin their friendship. We don't have enough of these kinds of films any more, at least outside of television movies and even then they tend to be beset by tragedy.

It's perfectly structured. When Harry Met Sally follows the classic Hollywood structure to the minutes. The set-up section which covers the stuff in the past, the opening ride to New York and them meeting on the plane is exactly the first quarter of the film, about twenty-five minutes. The next quarter, almost exactly twenty-five minutes, is about them becoming friends but the turning point is at the New Years Eve party when they realise they have stronger feelings than that. The next twenty five minutes are about them trying to still be friends under these circumstances and the sexual tension leading to them having sex leading to the final twenty-five when they're apart leading to them falling love. Then at the very end Harry and Sally, talk through this structure to camera. Wow.

It's a film which changes as you age. When I first saw the film, on rental video in probably about 1990, perhaps at a friend's house, all of these characters seemed to much older than me and worldly wise and having lives I could only dream of. Now that I'm forty, the characters will seem much older than me and worldly wise and having lives I could only dream of. But the process of aging which is one of the film's many topics runs deeper with me now. Example: When Sally says "And I'm going to be forty!" "When?" "Someday!" "In eight years!""But it's there! It's like a big dead end!" She proposes it's different for men. She's talking about the biological clock but for all kinds of other reasons that scene rings oddly hollow.

This speech: "I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." Which is more than enough to make up for the film resolving to type and having Harry run to the place to try and convince Sally to return to him.

Plus there's the atmosphere. Whilst aping Woody Allen in some respects (though as I suggested in an earlier discussion without actually copying him as the film has reputationally been implied) (that would be Miami Rhapsody) the seasonal colours, the brownstones, the Manhattan streets. When it came time to refurbish my flat, I asked for a faux-wooden floor in my bedroom as homage to carpet rolling scene in When Harry Met Sally. It's the film which made me want to move into a city centre where everything is just accessible, all the time, when it's just as easy to go out for lunch as stay in. Granted it's a dream-like place and like Woody Allen's films ignores most of the rest of the city, but as a school boy this was one of the films which almost acted like a portal to somewhere better.

Having had to reiterate all of that have a feeling that I probably would have chosen it anyway. I can't think of a single reason why I wouldn't. For everything above but also because it's the film I most want to watch. For various reasons I don't have my copy to hand right now and it's "killing" me. I think I might end up buying another one too since Netflix didn't renew their license for it and having written about it again here, I'm desperate to see again. Have you seen it? The film, I mean, not my copy. If you haven't, I hope this hasn't spoiled it for you too much and I recommend, no I plead with you to watch it as soon as you can. It'll spoil the modern romantic comedy for you, but it's worth it for the pretty much the whole thing.

Film Briefly, very briefly. Having finally seen MARVEL's Ant-Man this lunchtime and in a similar style to The Avengers post because I don't have a coherent, flowing argument just a few random points of order... expect spoilers. Don't read this if you haven't seen the film yet.

(1) It's a bodge but an entertaining bodge. Even after seen the film, I'm not dissuaded from anything I've said previously in these posts:

Having pursued the insanity of making an Ant-Man film for years even as the MCU idea invalidated why Edgar Wright wanted to make it in the first place, there needed to be a situation creatively where the director put up and shut up in script terms with Kevin Feige simultaneously allowing him to direct it in his own style or dumping the whole thing and letting Diablo Cody produce Squirrel Girl instead or some such.

Just as the Thors are grand fantasy, or Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a conspiracy thriller and Spider-Man will be their teen series, Ant-Man was supposed to be the Edgar Wright comedy. So when the competent but directorally vanilla Peyton Reed took over, his job he was on to a loser since he couldn't direct what the project is supposed to be but similarly with the lead in he was unable to dump everything and start again, and it shows.

It's a bodge, a project in which two different directors with all obviously different styles are pulling away from one another, one of whom is behind the camera, the other still around as a kind of ghost. It's AI (Kubrick vs Spielberg) or X-Men: The Last Stand (Singer vs Ratner). There are moments which have to have been kept from the Wright/Cornish script, the funniest bits probably, and it makes the whole thing endearingly messy.

If anything, Reed seems to adopt three different styles. The closest to Reed himself and certainly scriptwriter Adam McKay is probably the stuff with Scott Lang and his family which resemble an "adult" comedy or Indiewood piece (underscored by the Judy Greer casting). Whenever the MCU interpolates it's the Russii of Captain America. Everything else from the slapstick to the "mime" montages to all the business with Rudd's friends and visual gags (including the Thomas bit in the trailer) are very Wright.

Of course as anyone who's had to work out which bit of Shakespeare's collaborations are Shakespeare or someone trying to write like Shakespeare or Shakespeare trying to write like his collaborators, the who did what isn't certain and won't be unless the Wright script is leaked (assuming it hasn't already). The casting was apparently mostly done before Wright walked (which is interesting because parts of Rudd's dialogue sound like they were written for Simon Pegg).

But let me be clear: despite all of this, in places, Ant-Man touches on brilliance. Parts of it are as good as anything MARVEL has been involved with. We can argue all we want about who is responsible for that and as I've said before at some point in the future there will be a long essay by someone who has the time arguing that the MCU is franchise as auteur, in which case Ant-Man is akin to The Trouble With Harry in Hitchock's pantheon or Woody Allen's Amazon series. But, yes, brilliance.

(2) Apart from the themes about passing the baton and essentially retelling the same story as Iron Man, Ant-Man is also about how to do an origin story in a universe where superheroes are a "reality" in a similar way to a Doctor Who alien invasion story when they sort of thing happens weekly or the Buffy comics now that magic and vampires are out in the open and actually have their own chat shows. This is the action comedy version of Skye's arc in Agents of SHIELD.

Without going around in circles, the amount of MCU activity might have been why Wright walked and it feels bolted on, although I really did yelp on seeing the top of the New Avengers building wondering if anyone would cameo and very pleased with the answer. See also the working of Spider-Man into the dialogue near the end. For a teenager, he's already making waves in the verse and of course it'll be interesting to see how he appears in Civil War.

Far cry from Iron Man's post-credits. To return to the Who analogy (sorry), we've now gone from Ninth not mentioning Davros by name in Dalek to Davros turning up in Journey's End and remembering who Sarah Jane is. The trick now will be keeping things fresh, and doing away with origin stories seems to be the thing. But shifting into radically "different" genres looks to be a useful process also, though I'd still like to see "non-superhero" material set in the MCU.

But content wise it doesn't feel like the kind of film which should be judged a flop on those terms. If this had been an Avengers or any of the other larger films were a building, spaceship or town falls out of the sky at the end then it would have been worrying. But much of the film takes place in and around Scott Lang's apartment, his ex-wife's house, Hank Pym's house or the laboratory which has his name. The most compelling sequence is about a tiny reformed burglar drifting through inner space in a dayglo version of the Orphan Black title sequence.

Ant-Man represents the sort of film I'd like MARVEL to do more of. Much as I like the larger films were a building, spaceship or town falls out of the sky at the end, I'm more often drawn to the minor characters into MARVEL comics, the non-Gods (which is also presumably why I still tolerate Agents of SHIELD). There's a sense of that in Phase Three with something like Black Panther which doesn't look like it's going to be a giant blockbuster either.

Which is why I'd love a sequel. There isn't one planned, but the obvious idea would be for the new Ant-Man and Wasp, mentored by Pym to enter the microverse searching for the older Wasp and with the obscuring of her face throughout, there's clearly a plan for that, leaving the door open in casting terms. Catherine Zeta Jones? Sandra Bullock? Juliet Binoche? Anne Archer? I'm trying to think of actors who haven't already been in this space before. It's tricky.

The problem is there's no space for it as such going forward. The July slot is free next year but that's not enough lead time, which makes the next potential slot November 2019. MARVEL could decide to slot another one in ala Spider-Man and push everything up again, but Ant-Man isn't Spider-Man. Another option would be a DTV film in collaboration with Netflix but they're already tied up with The Invaders series so that seems unlikely too. Sigh.

TV Having recently completed the decade long business of reading, reading and listening through the mainstream of the Eighth Doctor's adventures and posting reviews, I thought I'd put together something which links to all of those reviews which could also double as a chronology should anyone decide to try and repeat the exercise. Good luck with that. As you'll see from the linked the dates, the novels took almost as long to read as their original publication history.

As I explained in the barebones version a few years ago although there are a number of chronologies available (and I'm grateful to @girlfromblupo for pointing me to this one) many of them tend to mix the various media together. My own version keeps things simple and has the books then the comics then the audios since they're all relatively self contained, especially since Big Finish decided to create a whole new character to explain the reference to Sam from Minuet in Hell.

In the process of completing all of this, there is still a lot of material which I've missed so for the purposes of fannish completism, I'll be enjoying my way through those too and I'll add them into the main trunk of the list once they're reviewed where I think they should be (just to add to the challenge), as well as anything new which is published. Some of the prose is about audio and comics characters so they'll be more obvious. We'll see about everything else.

Finally quick word about format. Anything which isn't in italics is original publication history. Anything in italics was produced after the fact and I've added extra information in the brackets afterwards to explain what it is. Originally, I did have lots more gaps to delineate "seasons", but decided in the end to just separate the more obvious runs of continuous narrative (which then runs aground with Dark Eyes which is a sixteen adventures, four adventures and a single one altogether).

For the Man Who Has Everything (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)
They Fell (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)
Decorative Purposes (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)
Faithful Friends - Part 3 (Short Trips: The Ghosts of Christmas)

From Little Acorns (Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership)
One Fateful Knight (Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership)
Epilogue (Short Trips: The Quality of Leadership)

Updated 25/07/2015 I've added "Time War era" in at the bottom because it looks like it's going to be its own multi-format thing. It'll be interesting to see how co-ordinated Big Finish, Titan and whoever else will be. I believe one of the IDW comics already contradicts Day of the Doctor in relation to the nature of the "moment". No more, no more, no more ...

Updated 28/12/2015 I've added The Diary of River Song. The Titan limited series, also set during the Time War is out but I'll post a review of those when the series is finish and add them to the timeline then in case there's something which indicates how close they're set to the regeneration. As I've said elsewhere, the Time War era sounds like it's going to be populated without a clear narrative order unless someone decides to attempt to official apply one. Most likely it'll be like the Baker era between Trial and his regeneration or in Big Finish terms between their ongoing (currently Doom Coalition) and Night of the Doctor.

Updated 15/01/2015 After Foreshadowing, The Elixir of Doom and Bounty (and Klein's Story although that's an alt.Eighth), I'll be hitting the subscriber wall on the audios. The three short stories and The Four Doctors are only available if you sign up to various subscriptions at Big Finish and money is unfortunately an object right now. Copies of The Four Doctors do turn up on eBay now and then, but £30 is still a bit steep. Availability of these old stories is going to be a huge problem going forward especially in the hard copy Short Trips. Expect updates to become sporadic.

Updated 21/01/2015 I've added a Miscellany section for alternative non-canonical versions of the Eighth Doctor.Updated 04/04/2016 Not that Titan's Eighth Doctor comics series is completed, I'm all caught up with the Eighth Doctor's canonical comics adventures. Unless I've missed something.Updated 08/06/2016 The Four Doctors, Doom Coalition 2 and The Curse of the Fugue all added which means barring those pesky three subscriber specials and the reading of Bounty I'm all caught up audio wise. Oh and Klein's Story. Oh.

"Dharker was visually memorable as Queen Jamillia despite having only five lines. But she has said that the costume – layered black-and-gold capes topped off with a fan of gold blades like petals on a flower – did most of the acting. Could she call it a performance? “I didn’t have enough to do to answer that question.” Still, she got to meet George Lucas, even if she never saw the proposed doll of her character. “I don’t think they made one. I know the girl characters don’t sell as well as the boy ones. I feel sorry for any child who got given one of me – this small, Indian penguin.”"

"Wow, we’re covering the whole thing, aren’t we? [Laughs.] The only thing I remember about that was the first day. The first A.D. came into the trailer where we were all having our makeup and shit done, and he was, like, “Guys, I need your attention, please.” And we were, like, “Yeah?” And he said, “Um, Mr. McConaughey’s gonna arrive on set in about 15 minutes, and I have to give you a directive—which comes from the producers—that you are not to call him ‘Matthew’ or ‘Mr. McConaughey’ or anything to do with his real life. You must call him Van Zan.” Van Zan was his character name. “And even if you meet him outside in the road, even if you meet him out in town in Dublin,” where we were shooting this movie, “you must call him Van Zan.” And that is exactly what I remember about that movie, because as that first A.D. left the building, I shouted—rather lamely—“And he’s got to call me Elvis!” But he didn’t call me Elvis. In fact, he didn’t call me anything!"